Charlottesville is an enchanting Virginia college town graced by the neoclassical architecture of the university’s founder, Thomas Jefferson. I flew there with two friends, the talented photographer Jonathan Becker and the Vietnam Special Forces Silver Star winner Chuck Pfeifer, all of us close buddies of the deceased. It was the memorial service for Willy von
Santino was unusually short in the leg and, in his mid-twenties, was already rapidly losing his hair. He had recently come from Argentina to France to train as a tourist guide. He was earnest about his vocation and hoped one day, he told us, to become a guide specialising in Unesco World Heritage sites. To
A leaflet came through my door from the NHS inviting me to take part (if that is the right term) in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. What a kind offer, I thought. They must know I’m stressed. Fine, so I didn’t think that. I thought: what a blasted cheek! This leaflet is a mailshot, clearly, and has
Laikipia, Kenya ‘An elephant has fallen over,’ said the man running up to me. My first thought was that poachers had killed the animal for its tusks. ‘Has it been shot?’ The man shrugged. ‘He was eating leaves, then he just fell over.’ As Claire and I made our way to the place, I
On Monday, I appeared on Good Morning Britain to debate President Trump’s forthcoming state visit with Asad Rehman, the executive director of War on Want. I was surprised to learn that War on Want, a charity in receipt of lottery funding, is a partner in the Stop Trump Coalition, the group behind the anti-Trump demonstration
Say what you like about Elland Road — and in my experience it is not a place to linger — but Leeds United is the soap opera that just keeps on giving. The sainted Marcelo Bielsa, their coach, has won himself massive plaudits and double page spreads in the press for the near-miraculous feat of
Q. A university friend and I want to get an invitation to a very good shoot owned by a colleague of my father. To this end we thought we could make better friends by inviting him to my club for lunch or dinner. This club is the sort of stuffy, traditional place he would approve
Each suburban soul yearns for the Soho of their youth. It isn’t that Soho was better in the 1990s when I invaded the Colony Room, twitching, and took a fag off Sarah Lucas. It is that I was. This was the view of a friend after I last wrote on Soho restaurants. We once ran
Some birds seem inherently comical. I can’t help being amused by the duck taking its name from its habit of ducking. In English it has enjoyed this name for some time — a thousand years or so. Before that it was called ened, a word related to the Latin anas, anatem. Similarly, the swift is
